Hamantashen for Purim

Ooooooo Yummy sounding!  Can't wait to make it...good thing Friday is pay day!

Tammy

Thanks, Yenta and Tammy.  I REALLY like to see these legacy recipes; Alice put some in from her uncle who was a famous caterer in the South.  I'd put some of Pablo Blanco's recipes too, as those truly are representative of where we have come from related to foods.  And therein they provide a lot of thought provoking and space for discussion, because we all know they're made up of things that are causing us some degree of harm or another at one level, but benefit at a different level.  And therein lies the difficulty in changing how people eat, I believe. 

Tammy brings up a good point about the cost of these things; many people believe that they cannot afford to eat organic or gluten free, etc., but that's because they're trying to duplicate their current way of eating/products in a more expensive way, rather than eating more simply and less processed.  Once in a while maybe for some it's okay to splurge and buy, make, eat these things as it's 'good for the soul', and maybe for some they cannot ever have it. 

Related to change: I recall my mother, who became Catholic after I was an adult, a prerequisite from her husband, my father that we not be given religious bias in our formative years and then decided what to do as adults. I had hopes that ther escalating and long-term alcoholism and smoking might be redirected, changed or stopped because of this.  For her first Lent, she gave up her beloved martinis, but was a very stable and established alcoholic / functional alcoholic (though that was becoming more 'dysfunctional' by that time, it was part of why she took up religion I believe.)  She drank wine instead, then after dinner had more alcohol in order to get the same amount of alcohol per night, as she would get DT-type symptoms if she didn't have alcohol at that 'level'.  So that was all 'fine and dandy' but then when the six weeks of Lent were over she went back to martinis before and with dinner and then after dinner continued to have the liquor/spirits after dinner. 

Instead of something being beneficial as you'd think, it ended up leading to her death very rapidly after she became Catholic.  While I've mourned the loss of what could have been a wonderful mother/daughter relationship my whole life, and miss the many good things about her since that time, I overall have sadly come to recognize from the 'insider's perspective' how these things work.  I have always been grateful that we on the whole didn't eat sweets in my family and I had such good food compared with the average person in the 1960s and 1970s, my formative years.  And I hope that by sharing this story and my thoughts about the legacy of foods and their part in our lives, it simply makes YOU think about your relationship with it and know that there are many resources here on Lumigrate to help you with making change if that's what you want to do. 

In the mean time, I hope I can near Yenta sometime when she makes this, it sounds interesting and I'd love to say I have experienced it.  I know one of my favorite deserts is also a Jewish tradition I learned of in OT school in 1995 -- slices of apple you dip in honey.  Telling someone about that who was putting together an healthy cooking class recalled sprinkling cinnamon on slices of peeled citrus, which was also delicious, and those and some strawberries were a really wonderful feast for the eyes and palate and body as it just felt like it was very positive energetically (using organic as much as was available).  I truly hope within the established criteria of what is acceptable, the elders in our society and religions start teaching those below them in experiences and stature the NEW ways of eating traditionally.

~~ Mardy